Reagan’s Foreign Policy and Ours

“Reducing the risk of war ... is priority number one.”

It’s fitting that the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the tenth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s death were just a day apart. Reagan’s remarks on the 40th anniversary of the Normandy invasion set the tone for all future commemorations as he delivered what is widely regarded as one of his best speeches.

Bill Clinton reportedly watched videos of the speech before embarking on his own trip to Normandy in 1994. Ten years later, that’s where George W. Bush reacted to the news of Reagan’s death. Barack Obama is said to have watched many of Reagan’s speeches; it’s unlikely the 1984 D-Day anniversary address missed the cut.

The speech will also leave its imprint on the Republican foreign-policy debate as many 2016 contenders try to wrap themselves in the mantle of Reagan. The lessons many of them will draw from it are predictably hawkish.

“We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars,” Reagan said. “It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost.”

What might be the money line for a Chris Christie or Jeb Bush: “We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”

“Isolationism” is in the parlance of some the only alternative to war and intervention. And from Russia to Iran, we are told, isolationism will not do.

Reagan didn’t necessarily see things this way.

“But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation,” the 40th president of the United States continued. “In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.”

“It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II,” Reagan said. “Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands.”

A little over two years later, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were discussing the abolition of nuclear weapons in Reykjavik. They didn’t accomplish this, but in 1987 they did conclude a historic arms reduction agreement that displeasedmany conservatives.

John P. Roche penned an article in National Review calling the INF Treaty “Reagan’s Suicide Pact.” Four years later, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War was won.

Mudwrestling over Reagan’s foreign policy may not seem like a productive exercise, not least because the world has changed so much since he was president. But some on the right who like to speak in Reagan’s name appear to view all international threats through the prism of World War II or the Cold War, regularly seeking a new Nazi Germany or Soviet Union to vanquish.

The hawks like Reagan’s moral clarity and his bedrock belief in America’s role as leader of the free world. They have less use for his aversion to war and killing. Six months before his D-Day speech, Reagan said, “Reducing the risk of war—especially nuclear war—is priority number one.”

Reagan noted this disconnect himself when he wrote of some advisers in his memoirs, “they tossed around macabre jargon about ‘throw weights’ and ‘kill ratios’ as if they were talking about baseball scores.” His Secretary of State George Schultz observed, “Reagan was consistently committed to his personal vision of a world without nuclear weapons; his advisers were determined to turn him away from that course.”

None of this is to deny that Reagan was in many respects a hawk himself, a firm believer in American military might as a force for good. He was certainly not a non-interventionist. But many of his contemporary admirers seem to forget the first word of “peace through strength.”

It is hard to imagine Reagan—whose only land war lasted about two days—advocating simultaneous military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and Libya, as some neo-Reaganites appear to do if you take their rhetoric at face value.

If the Republican presidential candidates go back and study Reagan’s speech, let’s hope they pay attention to all his words, as well as his deeds.

To me, Reagan’s foreign policy was similar to that of Eisenhower in that it believed in a strong defense.

Eisenhower and Reagan went down in history as great presidents BECAUSE OF THE WARS THAT THEY WERE STRONG ENOUGH TO KEEP THE US OUT OF THE CONFLICT.

Obama will go down as positive to mediocre on foreign policy. On the plus side, Obama did keep the US out of foreign wars and foreign entanglements. On the negative side, Obama failed to manage the VA and failed to finance a military modernization program. Instead Obama just cut defense spending for domestic spending.

GW Bush, McCain and Romney all were or would have been bad presidents because they or the people on their team were all warmongerers.

Pat Buchanan addressed it in his last post on freeloader allies who wont pay their share. How can a US President refrain from foreign entanglements when foreign allies like Israel have entrenched themselves with internal US political lobbies that advocate constant war on their behalf. Its easy for these nations like Israel to advocate constant warmongering. Israel will still get its hundreds of millions of dollars in military and foreign aid (The US give more aid in GDP per Israeli than the US spends on welfare per US citizen…comforting to know that the US takes better care of the citizens of a foreign nation that it does of its own citizens).

Still the penultimate question is, how can the US be a peaceful nation when parasitic allies want the US to fight proxy wars using US taxpayer money and the lives US citizen soldiers while these parasitic allies have no skin in the game. They risk no loss of foreign or military aid, no loss of US diplomacy on their behalf, no cost to their taxpayers and no loss of their citizens lives. THERE IS NO REASON FOR THESE PARASITIC NATIONS TO BE PARTNERS IN PEACE!

They (the avg US citizen) particularly doesnt like proxy wars for foreign nations, proxy wars as economic stimulus for the defense industry, proxy wars for banks and federal reserve.

They (the avg US citizen) ABSOLUTELY doesnt like an electorate the has the money for foreign wars, foreign aid, foreign intervention BUT DOES NOT HAVE THE WAR FOR US INFRASTRUCTURE, US WELFARE AND FOOD STAMPS, US HEALTHCARE.

Increasingly the avg US citizen will not stand for immigration while there are large numbers of unemployed, longterm unemployed and those able to work but are on govt assistance.

Increasingly the avg US citizen will not stand for taxes on production rather than consumption, tax subsidies for importing goods/services while exporting US manufacturing/service jobs.

This is a huge problem that both parties do not have a grasp because they are still focused on foreign adventures lobbied by foreign governments. US citizens want justice for the US citizenry. The US citizenry deserves to be the priority

“GW Bush, McCain and Romney all were or would have been bad presidents because they or the people on their team were all warmongerers . . .”

Ohhh good grief. Baloney. Our collective response to 9/11 would most likely have been the same regardless of who was in office- minus very few. The grand narrative neo-conservative democratic transformation was not evil not did it demand military strikes to topple governments.

Iraq had been in the cross hairs of democrats and republicans who felt the job had not ben completed. And practically no one resided on the strings that 9/11 was a crime as opposed to an act of war requiring small covert ops, the CIA and the FBI to get the culprits.

The attempt to rewrite history to make villains out of conservatives and republicans is tiresome.

And there is no mistake that most interventions have been launched by democratic leaders.

What restrained every admin prior to the end of the ‘cold war’ was the specter of nuclear conflagration and global catastrophy. Minus that I have no doubt the executives of that period would have been tempted to wield big sticks in much the same way — revenge and accomplishing other agendas as well as sending a message that we are not to be messed with.

Sorry AC but the facts just don’t conform. Kaddafi’s “line of death” was almost ten years old when RR took office. The Europeans, just across the Med Sea ignored it without consequence. Reagan’s 1st military action was to play a game of chicken in the Gulf of Sidra. It did not have a good end, Lockerbie, with lots of other unnecessary carnage in the meantime.

Then there’s the crazy Marine barracks bombing along with two embassies blown up in Beirut in the same period. It was indefensible. Weinberger said “they had no mission” and weren’t allowed to protect their flanks.

Then he got tangled up in the Gulf War sending TOW missiles to the Iranians. They were always presumed to be responsible for the Beirut bombings. A Federal court made this finding. This also led to us shooting down a civilian airliner over its own territory.

There are many other things that went awry. The fact is Reagan’s foreign policy was a disaster that fueled the fires of terrorism. People shouting Benghazi are either delusional or suffering from dementia if they cite Reagan’s record.

Reagan was not a neocon. When it came to the Barracks bombings of Marines, what did he do? He withdrew the troops. Imagine if Obama would’ve done something like that today. Almost every single Republican would be screaming for war. You can bet on that! Also, I believe that it was many neocons on his team that wanted him to send thousands of troops into El Salvador (or was it Honduras, I can’t exactly remember lol), and Reagan resisted the neocons on this one too. Again, imagine if Obama had done the same thing today…

The problem with Reagan was that the drastically blew up the spending on the military, which in turn led to President’s after him using the military for tons of stupid purposes that had nothing to do with defending America. Somalia? C’mon, really? And I believe it was Clinton who dispatched the military 50-something times, more than any other President before him.